Why Can't We Have Nice Things?

If you’d prefer to listen to this post than read it, tap the Play button on the track above to hear my voice.

At some point on the rocky road of middle school, I was asked to be an inventor for a day. Each member of our class had to design an outdoor shower: something that could be made from basic materials and would work without the need for a power source. I recall sketching something involving a canister of water attached to a pipe attached to a shower head. But my mediocre skills in both drawing and physics became patently clear when I showed the sketch to my engineer father and he gently asked: “If the water is located below the shower head, how will you get it to come out?”

At which point I burst into tears.

No doubt my father—an actual inventor with three patents to his name—helped me fix my design and pass the assignment. But I don’t remember that part of the story. What I do remember is the gnawing frustration of understanding what was being asked of me but not being able to execute it, the gut-level rage of realizing that my brain, though capable of spinning words into webs, could not negotiate with the force of gravity.

And that was a few years before I got my first D on a physics test.

Fast-forward to earlier this week, as I lay on a table with my exposed chest covered in gel, being prodded by an ultrasound wand, after just having been squashed inside a mammography machine. Surely, I thought, shivering under a blast of air conditioning, somebody ought to invent a breast scanner that actually accommodates a human body, rather than twisting, poking, and compressing it?

It turns out somebody has. It’s called the Vera Scan, and it’s a state-of-the-art imaging machine whose operation is totally painless. But as of now, there are only 18 such machines in the entire United States, and the cost of using one here in New York City starts at $599.

Cue the frustration and rage.

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In middle school, we were constantly being taught about innovation: new inventions, new technologies, new ways of seeing and being. We learned about solar panels, electric vehicles, the recycling of waste into new materials. We brainstormed ideas about how to combat what was then called “global warming.” We even built scale-model houses out of oak tag paper. (Another assignment over which I shed many tears.) Back then, the world seemed full of inventors like my dad, designing and building and mass-producing new and exciting things that would help humanity achieve its full potential. (Or, in his case, at least improve our experience of watching television.)

That was thirty years ago. Today, while some parts of the world have massive solar farms and roadways that charge electric vehicles as they drive, the US is still dependent on fossil fuels. Only a small percentage of our recyclable waste actually gets recycled. Our government is reversing what little progress we’ve made toward combating climate change. While innovation has accelerated in some areas, such as digital technology, it has been stalled or even suppressed in many of the fields in which it would do the most good—particularly healthcare. Particularly women’s healthcare.

It’s been twenty-six years since I had my first breast ultrasound, and the only difference is that they now warm up the gel. It’s been nine years since I was first compressed into a mammography machine, and its edges still dig into my ribs while its cold plastic flattens my turned cheek. (Men, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask the woman nearest to you.) Fortunately, all of the issues for which I’ve undergone these tests have been benign, but the discomfort I’ve endured has not been insignificant. Scientists have apparently been developing pain-free mammogram alternatives for more than a decade. How many more will it take before all of us have access to them?

I was never destined to be an inventor of anything but stories. But millions of middle-school kids today have the potential to come up with the kinds of innovations that could utterly transform our world—not to line the pockets of billionaires, but to improve the lives of billions of people.

I just hope we still have a planet for them to live on by the time they grow up.